I know what you're thinking. It was said that Donald is just a general stereotype for all the crappy players the members of Dark Legacy have had the misfortune of knowing. I'm sure that everyone knows a 'Donald'.

But the other day we actually ran with the physical (er, pixelated) embodiment of Donald. For his privacy sake, I'm not going to give out his name. I will simply refer to him as Donald.

My current main is a level 65 draenei mage. (I shelved my 2 shaman) I was partied with my best friend, guildmate, and fellow leader who plays a shadow priest. Also level 65 (From this point on I'm going to refer to him as priesty). We were blowing up eels outside of Shattrath the other day when he had the brilliant idea to do a mana tombs run. I agreed. After all, instances should be free and easy exp, and we had the quests there to boot.

We join LFG. Our server is terribad in general. LFG is a nightmare. But sadly, everyone in guild was busy with a PVP premade. So into the shark filled waters we went. I went AFK because normally it takes anywhere from an hour to five to get a tank for an instance group. I came back five minutes later and we suddenly had a full group. Priesty was cackling because I thought it would take so long.

We run to achindoun and I off handedly notice that all the other members are already in the mana tombs. Not really a good sign because I'd like to have a shot at all the mobs. (You can't finish one of the quests without the beginning trash) Not to mention none of them ran out to summon us, but that's a personal pet peeve.

With a level 68 in the group, I thought, this should be cake, no? OH HOW I WAS WRONG.

We arrive and the rogue says, "Can you heal, the druid is balance." to my friend the priest. He shrugs and warns that he isn't spec'd for it, but he'll do it.

My suspicions are confirmed. All the trash up the first boss has been cleared. Oh well. We're already there and committed. But now I have a new suspicion. Why, oh why, had the original 2 members left the group right at the boss? Perhaps time constraints? Oh, if only I had heeded the many warnings.

Priesty whispers me, "Dear God, look at Donald's talents."

How bad could they possibly be?

Well. I didn't get past the first tab because he was spec'd 2/3 into improved rend.

Priesty whispers me again, "By Terokk's feathers, he's spec'd 48 points into the prot tree but doesn't have last stand." (There was more swearing in there, but I'll spare you.)

I sigh, but ignore it. After all, it's his game, he can spec how he likes. Plus, skill normally makes up for talent builds. I learned this while healing raids as elemental back in the day.

We get through Pandemonius relatively unscathed.

Up to the next trash pull. The rogue starts marking targets. All of them. "Sheep star, kill skull, sapping circle." etc. Whatever, some people need the help. She goes up and saps.

And I sheep. And wait for Donald to pull the other mobs off me.

And wait. And wait...

Finally he keyboard turns and runs over. Now, having never actually SEEN a tank keyboard turn before, I was laughing at this point. It just looked hilarious, despite the fact that I died. So did Priesty. And finally, so did the druid and rogue. Our first wipe on trash. Not a good sign.

Priesty whispers me, "Let's run. The tank is terribad. Just say your cat is on fire."

I reply that no, we should stay. It was probably just a slip up or an accident. *sigh* I am too nice.

We get to the trash again. Sap. This time I wait for HIM to pull. After the sap is already practically gone, he shoots and YES! Awesome. Sheep. Let's do this.

He's tanking and I wait for a sunder. And wait. And wait. Okay I guess he doesn't want to sunder. Fireball! BAMF! AGGRO! ARRIGHT! Here comes the mob!

Donald stands there looking confused for a good 10 seconds before keyboard turning and running over. By then we had already killed the monster. He pops the sheep with a rend as the sap breaks. No problem, sheep the sap target. Oh okay, it's been moonfired already. The druid is tanking it. Our combined firepower takes it out, then we focus on Donald's. We manage to not wipe this time.

Flash forward a few wipes until we get to the trash surrounded by mana eels. The ones that both mana drain and explode.

"AoE them" says Donald. Yeah how about no. We let him happily tank his one target as we got rid of the others.

The rogue starts marking our next targets (you'd think we were in BT or something) and Donald runs up to grab the void terror. And here come more mana eels. And a fear. And adds. And a wipe. As we run back Donald says in party, "So someone pulled the eels, eh?"

Yeah it was totally 'someone' else and not you. Mhm.

We get back in and priesty is screaming at me to get me to leave. I say no, no, Donald is probably like 13 and just needs some help. Give it another chance.

We buff up aaand. He goes AFK for maybe 10 minutes with no warning. Whatever. We do the next few mobs solo. He comes back just in time for a 2 pull.

"lol sorry had to get a drink" he says. Oh okay, as long as it was something important.

The rogue marks the sap target but this time forgets to mark the skull. But it's a 2 pull. The logical conclusion is that if one is sapped, the other is the one that needs to be killed.

Mmk. Sap, the druid pulls with a starfire aaand...Donald breaks the sap. The non-CCed mob is running through the casters and now, so is the sapped target as Donald frantically keyboard turns and runs everywhere. We wipe again.

Donald: "U DIDNT MARK SKULL I DIDNT NO WAT TO KILL"

How could I do anything but laugh? Priesty and I are on vent laughing our asses off. We get back in and continue trying. Eventually we get to the final boss and since the rogue didn't really know how to go after more than one target, we just couldn't do it. Priesty and I dropped after the second failure.

The next day we queue in LFG for a second time. Guess who is immediately sorted into our group? Mmyep. We ran with a resto shaman, shadow priesty, me, and another balance druid. It was easier because we just kind of let Donald run where-ever while Priesty and the shaman kept us alive. He needed every single piece of loot that dropped. One was a fist weapon, the other was a sword, and the final piece was the DE shard that we got from the last boss. We wiped once on a four pull because Donald broke the and it ran around through the casters. His excuse was, "SORRY guyz i didnt see it". I wonder if he plays in first person?

I never want to see mana tombs again in my life.

You may be thinking to yourself, "But isn't she the dumb one for staying in a bad group?"

Well yes, yes I am. I am a glutton for punishment. After all, I played a resto shaman back in the days when the only raiding scene was MC and none of the talent changes had gone live.

But I will say this. Nothing is quite as hilarious as the gentle swaying of a keyboard turning tank.

It's tragic because I run heroics on my shaman with the other guildmembers, so asking, "OH PLEASE RUN ME THROUGH THIS" for my mage makes me seem so selfish, heh. I'm sure they would, but I'd rather they spent time earning the gear that they want.

Priesty's main is a paladin, and when we rolled new toons he strongly advised me against a paladin. (Plus as a raiding shaman, I have some biases against most holy paladins. But that's all my opinion and likely caused by the paladins I was raiding with. )

I wish we had more competent warriors and paladins on our server. Nowadays every paladin is ret, and every warrior is a Donald. My server is literally a cesspool. it's like 220th out of 227 in the rankings on WoW jutsu (for whatever that's worth). D:

Kall wrote:I wish we had more competent warriors and paladins on our server. Nowadays every paladin is ret...

Hey, I resemble that remark! Actually, a good Ret Paladin should be able to tank any non-heroic instance. Like you say, skill can make up for lack of talents. Of course, given the choice between the two, I'd rather heal.

Kall wrote:I wish we had more competent warriors and paladins on our server. Nowadays every paladin is ret...

Hey, I resemble that remark! Actually, a good Ret Paladin should be able to tank any non-heroic instance. Like you say, skill can make up for lack of talents. Of course, given the choice between the two, I'd rather heal.

I have no funny wipe stories, though I guess that's a good thing.

Yes it's true. Like I said, Priesty's main is a pally. He's normally ret but went prot to experiment after getting some gear. He spec'd back to ret when it game time for arenas. Plus he worked too hard for his skillherald to put it away for too long.

But since the latest patch, every paladin is ret. Ret paladins, like most hybrid classes, take a lot of work to play well. And 90% of the playerbase on my server cannot play well. I mean, I'm talking: there was a dude who would keep crusader aura up during Mag raids.

I've never really PuGed raid instances because I get really touchy about 24 people working hard and 1 person dragging ass. In a guild, at least they can be spoken to. In PuGs it's just kind of, "Oh well, I never have to see them again."

But I have heard horror stories. One of our tanks regularly tries to help newbie guilds in Gruul to get started. (he's BT + SSC geared) Nothing really beats the pally with crusader aura on though.

"OH GOOD WE CAN RUN TO THE CUBES FASTER-OH WAIT."

I have so many horror stories. We once had a tank in our raiding guild run at Hakkar while dual wielding.

"I wanted to get rage faster." Okay.

Then the durid who fell asleep. We booted him from the raid, but he was already a corpse, so the corpse stayed. For some reason when we kept attempting hakkar, the big snake would soul drain the lifeless corpse. So you'd see a bunch of red lines and then that one green line from somewhere far away in the instance.

Oh and BWL. Oi vey. We spent the previous night clearing to Nef. We had freakin' red and black (and we were horde, so we were doing it hardmode, back before horde had pallies and the shaman call was ridiculous). We survive through to Nef landing and everyone in the raid survives.

It's been too long since I raided for me to remember any really good wipes.

I do remember the one time I fell asleep at the keyboard. In UBRS... I apparently dozed off in the last room, literally looking at Drakk. I came to with him dead, the loot loooong gone, my group disbanded, and me in the middle of an eirily empty room.

I've wiped a few 5-mans because I hit BoP on the main tank.

As for the poor warrior in the original post. Maybe someone should point him to some online guides to tanking. He's not going to get any better on his own (at least that much is evident).

Dorgol wrote:It's been too long since I raided for me to remember any really good wipes.

I do remember the one time I fell asleep at the keyboard. In UBRS... I apparently dozed off in the last room, literally looking at Drakk. I came to with him dead, the loot loooong gone, my group disbanded, and me in the middle of an eirily empty room.

I've wiped a few 5-mans because I hit BoP on the main tank.

As for the poor warrior in the original post. Maybe someone should point him to some online guides to tanking. He's not going to get any better on his own (at least that much is evident).

We tried. I advised him it might be better to use his mouse or throw up a couple sunders. He got defensive so I dropped it. I gave him a lot of chances, all things considering.

I remember being a total noob on an instance run and hitting need on items, because I thought it had a lower priority than greed. I also broke sap targets because I didn't know what a sap was. But that was in Blackfathom Depths on my first instance run ever - I think I had most of that shit worked out of my system by the time I was 65

In my old guild, a certain tank became a running joke. I wasn't there on this particular run, but the rest of the people were guild members. Apparently this tank hadn't actually done a 5-man before, even though he was level 70. He had no idea how to tank, and had to be told to do things like put up sunders. He didn't really understand that his purpose was to make all of the mobs mad at you and keep them hitting you, and not the dps or healers. Somehow they got to the last boss and he announced, "Ok I'm just going to put up my 5 sunders and sacrifice myself." That became a running joke